The First Step
by Dagron
Summary: Hiroshi Agasa tells Shinichi about his first encounter with Ai Haibara. One Shot.


**Characters:**_Mainly professor Hiroshi Agasa and Ai Haibara.**  
**_** Rating: **_General.  
_**Length: **_3 724 words. Complete.  
_**Disclaimer:** _Dis-: negation, -__Claim: say to own.  
_**Notes:**_ Fanfiction inspired by a Fanart I did. Can be found with this fic on the shiho-sherry-ai Livejournal community. This is directly based on events in books 18 and 19._

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**The first Step.**

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**I**t was raining that day. Raining heavily. For once I'd been prepared and taken my umbrella with me as I went to do my shopping. It's amazing how quickly one runs out of spare parts, you know? Especially those fiddly light glass fibre ones... I was lucky the shop owner still had some!

Ahem, anyway, stop glaring at me like that Shinichi, I'm getting to the point...

So there I was, walking home, cheery as a fiddle despite the heavy rain, my purchases under my arm. Nothing could have killed my mood, at least that's what I thought. When I was at my gate, fiddling with my keys (I had noticed some intruders in the neighbourhood recently), I glanced towards your front gate... and saw her.

At first, I didn't know how to react.

I dropped my purchases, keys and umbrella, and ran towards this figure on the ground. At first all I'd noticed was a small human shape in overly large clothes. For a moment I had thought you'd gotten into some kind of trouble, you know... I had this flash of you lying there, shrunken, drenched, alone, maybe even wounded. I couldn't help but recall that night. The circumstances seemed so similar.

It came as both a big relief and a great shock that it wasn't you. Relief in the sense that it wasn't as I had feared for a second, shock in the fact that I had the feeling that the child lying at my feet might not be a child at all...

Heavens, I thought I would never see another shrunken person in my whole life. You've got to understand my scepticism at the time that this really could be another person like you.

Pushing aside my internal worry that the small girl at my feet might in fact be an adult, I kneeled down beside her to see if she was okay. She seemed so pale and weak that for a moment I feared she might have died... It was a great relief to feel her breath brush against my hand, to feel a pulse beneath my fingers. From that point on, I forgot everything about shrunken adults and set about trying to save the infant I saw before me.

Now Shinichi, don't you go accusing me of not using my eyes and brain. I merely felt as Ran probably does every time you persuade her she's wrong in thinking you are Shinichi.

Yes, at that point in time I felt like a fool for even considering she could have been anything else than a child. I thought to myself that she must have been playing with her mother's clothes, gone out , and then lost her way. I was saddened by the thought that some parents could be so careless as to let their daughter roam the streets alone.

At that point in time I scooped her up in my arms, picked up my keys and opened my gate so as to rush indoors. I didn't even bother with my purchases then; and by the time I did go out to pick them up again, my umbrella had long been carried away by the wind.

All this happened about two, three weeks ago. Yes, just as you'd returned from that trip to Izu with Ran and Kogoro. I didn't tell you then because, like I said, she asked me not to, at least for the time being.

Don't get carried away Shinichi, it's not just her "pretty face," as you crudely put it, that convinced me to do so. Listen to me...

Once inside, I immediately sought out a way to try and help her. Her clothes were drenched, and she was shivering from cold, despite the fact that it was fairly warm that day. I didn't even want to imagine how long she must have wandered under the heavy downpour.

So I helped her get changed. Her clothes were slipping off anyway. I hang them up on a hook to dry, or more accurately drip. I lent her one of my own tops as a nightshirt of sorts.

Don't look at me like that, Shinichi. Would you rather I had let her die of pneumonia?

I used a towel to dry her off, mainly her hair, and laid her down to rest on the sofa, with a duvet on top to help keep her warm. Then I had to wait for her to wake up. She'd barely been conscious enough to look up at me when I found her... And by the time I'd brought her in, she was already running a high temperature.

Now do you understand why I didn't tell you straight away when I first found out her true identity?  
She was weak and sick. I didn't think she'd be up to answering the questions I knew you would ask as soon as you discovered who she was. That, and I had feared you'd react with anger, like you did eventually.

Anyways, noticing her fever, I went to the kitchen counter to fetch a damp towel to help bring it down, and to make her a warm drink for when she awoke.

I waited a while, trying to figure out a way to contact the girl's parents or relatives...  
I didn't have much in the way of clues. I'd never seen the child in the area before, and I doubted that any parent in the neighbourhood would be stupid enough not to teach their child how to get home... I wondered if they had been travelling. Maybe visiting some relatives?

The police would most likely know, but before I would even consider calling them, I decided to look through the pockets of the lab coat and dress the girl had been wearing. I didn't really want to do it, but I had a feeling that if I called the police, they'd need more information than just "a small girl with auburn hair."

That's when I started having doubts about her really being a child again. All I found in her pockets were some keys, some spare change, and an ID card. An ID card that showed a photo of a young woman of no more than twenty, with hair and features similar to the young girl on my sofa. I thought she might be the girl's elder sibling, but I don't even know who I was trying to kid with that thought. Especially since, beside the photo on the ID were a code bar and a... Well, a name. "Sherry." It was only later I understood it wasn't a foreign name but the name of an alcoholic drink, a codename of that organisation...

... At that point I noticed the girl stir, as if she was having a bad dream. I came to her side, and worried over whether I should try to wake her up or not. She was no longer this inert and sleeping angel but a small tormented child, trying yet unable to escape the land of her nightmares. And all I could do was put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and replace the cloth that had fallen from her forehead.  
This seemed to work, and soon she was at peace once more. A few minutes later, I noticed her eyelids flutter open, and smiled.

That's when I choose to be daring, and, as much as I regret the look of terror that resulted from my act, it did confirm to me what you are so prone to doubt, Shinichi.

I said hello Sherry, and she panicked.

--:--

'_**P**anicked? Nice way of putting it Professor._'

Shiho Miyano, now known as Ai Haibara silently sighed. She'd just awoken from another sleep, another nightmare, and had approached the other two without their noticing. They probably thought she was still at the other end of the house, by the professor's computer, where she'd nodded off in the middle of her attempts to fix the damage done by the Night Baron virus she'd inadvertently exposed it to.

Oh, her attempts had been useless, as she'd known they'd be. But they were better than the looks the Kudo boy had been giving her since the Professor Hirota case. Ever since she'd broken down in tears in front of him that night, she'd found herself avoiding him. This hadn't been too hard to accomplish at school, even if she did sit beside him. Pretending to be too young to read Kanji was a poisoned blessing. When he came over to talk to the professor, it was also easy enough to hide behind a magazine or pretend she had something else to do. Thank goodness he'd been too busy solving cases through detective Mouri to come that often.

Tonight though, it had been impossible to avoid him. They'd just received the disk they'd been after, the police having screened it and, unsurprisingly, found nothing suspicious.

She wasn't reluctant to let him watch as she put the disk into the computer. After all, if the disk did have the info on APTX 4869 that she needed, she wouldn't have to suffer his presence for long. She didn't like feeling out of place like this. She didn't enjoy being looked at with a mixture of resentment and pity by the one person she'd thought would be able to understand her situation. She didn't want to impose on the kind professor who had taken her in.

But fact was, she had nowhere else to go. And as long as she was in the body of a child, there wasn't much she could change about that.

To be even more truthful, she'd been surprised to find refuge here.  
She remembered what Agasa was telling Kudo. She remembered her side of the story.

As she'd told the professor and Kudo, she'd been handcuffed by her superiors for her refusal to continue her work. In an attempt to foil them by killing herself she'd taken her own creation, and had experienced first hand the effects she suspected had affected teenage detective Kudo Shinichi.

Slipping her suddenly smaller hand out of the cuffs and fleeing through a trap door had been easy. Coming to terms with her situation and trying to figure out what to do, on the other hand, hadn't been so straightforward.

What was she to do? She'd been under the Organization's wing all her life. Where could she go to find refuge that they didn't know of?  
Her sister was no longer there for her, and even under the guise of a child, she knew they could and would find her. Even if Akemi had still been alive, she wouldn't have dared to go to her, knowing her sister would be the first person the Organization would be suspicious of.

But who, then? Who?  
She recalled the last conversation she'd had with Akemi, in that café. She had told her about the visit to Shinichi Kudo's place, hadn't she? Yes, of course. Kudo was in the same situation as her, wasn't he? Shrunken to the size of a grade-schooler, hiding from the organisation. If he had managed to escape them for this long, maybe, just maybe...

And so she had run through the rain across town to Beika, clutching desperately at her dress and coat, her naked feet freezing in the process, and all the while she'd been afraid they were behind her, following her. It had probably been too much by then. The drug had weakened her, and she hadn't really tried to take it easy.

She'd passed out just as she'd reached the gate she'd been looking for. The one with the name plate beside it that read 21, Kudo. She'd been too weak to even do more than acknowledge that someone was picking her up then.

Her dreams at that point? She didn't remember much. Probably something involving her sister's death and the black crows that were the Organization's assassins. Most of her dreams since had involved them in one way or another, which was why she hadn't refused the professor's offer of sleeping in a bed not far from his. That, and also because of the illusion she'd woken up to that fateful day.

Yes. An illusion. A nice illusion. She'd been having nightmares, but suddenly she'd felt a welcome warmth come and sweep them away. It was as if Akemi had never died, and they were children again. She had dreamt of them being together, with their parents, the Organization nothing but a shadow under the bed. She hadn't dreamt long though. Maybe the reassuring warmth of the dream had given her the courage to awaken. And when she had opened her eyes, she'd been startled to see a face exuding warmth and paternal concern. Yes. It was as if the father from her dream and the man watching over her had the same aura and presence.

But of course, no illusion is eternal, and it was the very man above her, with his round glasses and white hair, that broke it.

"Hello Sherry," he'd said.

Sherry. Not Shiho. How had he known her codename? She was doomed. She didn't know the man, but, despite not feeling the aura she had felt around others, she had no doubt that he was one of them. Probably one of their scientists. They'd found her despite her appearance and now they wanted to know how she'd acquired it.

She did the only thing she could have then. She sat up in a panic, fear rushing through her veins. Not only had she doomed herself, but she'd doomed Kudo as well. She'd wanted to keep him alive, not only in the hopes of studying the effect of her drug, but also, though she'd never admit it in front of him, in the hopes of being able to tell herself she was different from the others, that she could save a life. Now, if he didn't get killed, the shrunken detective would just become another guinea pig for the Organization to experiment with, alongside her, unless Gin decided to execute her as had first been planned.

But then the weirdest thing occurred. Seeing her panic, the old man had put up a concerned hand and added:

"Don't worry. You are safe here!"

Safe, huh? That's what she would say to her own lab rats... Before killing them with the experimental drug.  
All she could do was hide her fear the best she could and hope for an opportunity to come along.

He offered her a cup of what seemed to be hot chocolate. She refused.  
He introduced himself as professor Hiroshi Agasa. She didn't reply. Although it was strange that he hadn't given his code name.

"Er, just to make sure, your name is Sherry right?"  
She stared at him. What a question to ask. Was that a lame attempt at getting her to open up? Surely his superiors must have given him her file to read. Maybe he had only recently joined the Organization That would certainly explain the absence of any aura she could feel.

"Only I... Well. Erm. Forgive me if this may sound ludicrous, but, you aren't really a child, are you? Your reaction earlier makes me think that what happened to a friend of mine must have happened to you."

... A friend of his? Kudo?!  
And suddenly it all made sense. This Agasa wasn't working for the Organization at all, was he?  
She couldn't help it. It was such a relief yet so humiliating in a sense. She'd been wrong to fear him. And she had laughed. A sad, shy laugh.

"So I was right," she said. "The drug did shrink him."

The professor had looked perplexed at that, but a smile had graced his lips. His intuition had been right.

--:--

"**W**e talked to each other regarding who she was, where she was, and about your situation, Shinichi. She might have been working for them, but now they probably want her as dead as they wanted you, and she knows it."

The professor's voice snapped Haibara out of her recollection. She'd nearly forgotten that she was eavesdropping on them as they were speaking about her arrival here. Kudo must have asked the professor in the hopes of finding a reason to get her out of their lives, especially now that the disk she had mentioned to them had ended up a dead end. It might be better for them all if she just left. As much as she learnt to appreciate the professor's fatherly presence these past few weeks, she couldn't bring herself to think of his house as home, nor did she wish to, as long as the Organization was after her.

Nor did she wish to get too attached to these people... After all, if she was found, she had no doubt that the Organization would go after them... Just as they'd gone after her sister.

"I see..."

No Kudo, she thought, you don't see anything.

"Well, I guess the fact that the disk was booby trapped can't be helped after all. If she was working for them in an attempt to catch us, I doubt she'd have forgotten about the virus; and anyway they wouldn't have waited that long to make a move. What she's told us must be true, although I do wonder why she persists in not telling us her real name or age."

"Now Shinichi, one never asks a woman her age. I thought you'd know that considering who your mother is!"

A wry smile graced Haibara's lips. From what she had heard, Yukiko Kudo sounded like quite the character.

"Alright, alright. Anyway, I guess all we can do is make sure Haibara stays safe..."

Hmph. As if she couldn't see that coming. She was after all the closest thing he had ever found to a lead on the "men in black," as he called them. But he could dream on. No way was she going to give him more information about them. He might be a good detective, but it seemed to her that it had merely been luck and the fact that the Organization hadn't considered him that great a menace in the first place that had kept him alive. She wasn't going to give him information she knew he didn't have the resources to act upon. From what she'd seen, he was also too impulsive, as the case with the money forgers had proven to her. Otherwise she might, just might, have considered it.

"You are right, professor. She may have been raised by them to become one of their scientists, but she isn't one of them now. She's just as much a victim of theirs as I am. Perhaps even more."

A victim, eh? A couple of months back she wouldn't have considered herself one, but she couldn't deny that the Organization was responsible for her involvement in crime, for the death of her sister... As for her shrunken state? She'd brought it on to her herself, she probably deserved it.

"I guess the reason I was so mad at first is because I wouldn't have guessed who she was if she hadn't told me, and had just solved a case which I'd wrongly thought involved them. The fact that she pulled my leg and had me believe you were dead didn't help much either.  
But that doesn't matter now. She might be the creator of the drug and my only lead to them, but she's also and foremost a human being. I want to protect her from them. I don't want to see her cry again. Seeing Ran cry my absence is painful enough without remembering the tears of one who lost a sister to them."

Haibara couldn't help but notice the air of pained guilt around Kudo. She had blamed him for her sister's death that night, hadn't she? By asking him why he hadn't saved her, despite his genius at solving riddles, she had indirectly blamed him...  
So the great teenage detective Shinichi Kudo was human too, eh? Maybe they had more in common than she had at first thought...

If he was serious about his wish to protect her, she might as well continue protecting him. Maybe if she stopped avoiding him and started trusting him more, she could forget the look he'd had on his face when he'd reminded her of those who had died because of her drug... At least long enough to remember that he was human too, and, with professor Agasa, possibly the only allies she had.

She stepped foreword, startling the two and alerting them to her presence. She might as well give Kudo some encouragement. It was clear he was determined to find the Organization and an antidote, might as well show him she was there, and could help.

"Many people cry because of what the Organization has done to them. Most however, ignore that the Organization is to blame for their sorrows.   
You're going to continue as you have till now, making that useless detective out to be a great one. One day or the other, a case might come along where you'll bump into them.  
As long as you continue to seek the truth."

Kudo didn't look all that convinced. Chances were he thought she was referring to a comment he'd made earlier about his using Mouri as a front being useless. But it didn't matter, really. With a glance to the professor, she added:

"Also professor, I think I've managed to clean the Night Baron Virus out of your computer and reinstall your operating system, but I'm afraid I couldn't salvage any data from either the hard drive or the disk."

The professor merely waved the excuse away; it didn't matter as long as they were safe. It was a good thing the PC hadn't been connected to the internet at the time.

The first step had been taken. She could no longer entertain the idea of leaving them to go elsewhere...  
As much as she hated to admit it, just as she was their best source of information on the men in black and creating an antidote, they were her best chance of not only escaping their clutches, but also bringing them down.

And besides, messing with Kudo's mind had been fun.

--:--

**FIN.**


End file.
